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There was something in the dark with Cody.
Fabric or dry skin rustled to his left. Every now and then, something skittered along the wall to his right. From time to time, heavy breathing echoed through the cramped cell, then cut off again, replaced by absolute silence ringing in Cody’s ears.
Cody didn’t budge from where he was standing against the cell’s back wall. He couldn’t have moved, even if he’d wanted to. The manacles that chained his arms to the smooth plasteel surface were cast from solid metal and locked tight around his wrists, high above his head, unlikely to relinquish their hold on their prey any time soon.
So, Cody stood in the dark and stared straight ahead and breathed.
Time passed. Slowly, the lingering ache from the stun shot that had knocked him out subsided. Every now and then, fresh air was pumped into the cell, cooling the droplets of perspiration beading together on Cody’s brow. In addition to his blaster, commlink and all armor plating above his thigh guards, his helmet had also been missing when he’d regained consciousness, leaving hjs face bare to the room.
A wet sound cut through the silence, like the smacking of lips, or teeth being bared in a snarl.
In the manacles’ hold, Cody’s hands clenched into fists. However, he refused to let his eyes squeeze shut, too. For all he knew, whoever was tormenting him could see in the dark, read the fear in every fibre of his being.
He would not give them that satisfaction.
A muscle in his jaw jumped when the breathing started up again, closer this time, to his left.
He would not.
“Scared, little clone?”
The chains attached to the manacles rattled as Cody jerked, the back of his head slamming into the smooth wall. His heart hammered in his chest like the stomping engine of a larty. The taste of blood bloomed on his tongue.
“Oh, you are. Isn’t that cute?”
Cody squinted into the impenetrable darkness and dug his teeth into the groove he’d bitten into his cheek. He didn’t answer.
He didn’t have to. The breathing drew closer, and now Cody could hear every pronounced inhale in detail. The air being drawn in, held for a long time like it was being savored. Then, an exhale so gentle he almost missed it.
“What’s your name?”
Cody’s left knee had begun to shake. When had it started doing that? He clenched his teeth, tried to clamp down on the movement. Nothing. The joint kept on rattling in its armor.
The breathing turned into a delicate sigh. “Oh, right, I forgot. Clones don’t have names. So…what’s your serial number?”
For this, at last, Cody had an answer.
“I am Clone Marshall Commander 2224, Grand Army of the Republic, under the command of General Obi-Wan Kenobi,” he rattled off, willing his voice not to shake. It didn’t. “That is all I am authorized to reveal.”
The breathing cut off. The silence rang in Cody’s ears.
Both of his legs were shaking now. They were not doing as well as his voice.
Someone breathed, and warm, moist air clashed against Cody’s right cheek. He flinched.
“Oh, I’ve heard that line before,” the voice purred. “You clones are all the same—indoctrinated to perfection, with minds that were designed not to crack under any kind of pressure. Stupid, really. It just renders your lives worthless once you’re captured.”
A pause, in which svelte fingers hooked into the collar of his blacks and peeled the thick, slick fabric away from his neck. Cody caged the whimper that wanted to escape him behind his teeth.
The breath moved lower on his cheek, until it was brushing the edge of his jaw, then his throat. A deep, long inhale followed.
“I wonder if you’ll become more talkative once I get a taste of you.”
Cody opened his mouth. To do what, he didn’t know—he’d already said his piece, divulged as much intel as he would ever be allowed to share.
He never got around to finding out, anyway.
It began with a pinch in the side of his neck, right above his left collarbone. A double pinpoint of pain, faint at first but growing bolder. A sort of low, wavery moan was punched out of Cody as his hands twitched in their restraints, and he squirmed, trying to dislodge the sensation.
An invisible weight settled atop his shoulders and pressed his upper body against the wall. Slowly, the air began to be crushed out of his chest.
Cody didn’t panic. He kept calm and drew on the air left to him and dug his nails into his palms until blood started welling up under them.
The twin points of pain in his neck grew, sliding deeper under his skin, carving a way past flesh and tendon and muscle. Lights flashed behind Cody’s eyelids as he finally screwed them shut. The afterimages lingered on his retina, blinding in their intensity, and his jaw muscles locked up.
There was no air left in his lungs to scream, or even moan. Cold, wet lips brushed his neck before sealing closed over his skin.
The draining started as a slight, almost gentle sensation. A pressure in his arteries. A pull.
Someone swallowed close to Cody’s ear. Again, and again.
Distantly, he registered his hands going limp inside the restraints and the Force grasp holding him up. His heartbeat was thudding in his ears, yet sounding farther and farther away even as he struggled for air. The tips of his fingers and toes were growing cold.
Still, whatever had latched onto his neck drank and drank and drank and didn’t stop.
He was so cold. Cold, and tired, and empty.
His ears, his brain were buzzing. A gray fuzz bloomed and expanded behind his eyelids.
Close by, someone smacked their lips.
Cody was so, so cold. His pulse remained a faint murmur in his ears.
He almost didn’t feel it when the teeth slid out of his neck, and Asajj Ventress’ laughter was but a distant echo as she let go of him. Gravity did the rest. Without Ventress’ hold to keep him upright, Cody slumped into the restraints, which cut sharply into his wrists.
He barely felt it.
A faint glow filtered through his eyelids as metal scraped over stone—the cell door opening. Someone…Ventress was talking.
“Let’s see if he refills by himself. If not, leave him. He shall be…a test.”
In another plethora of noise, the light dimmed and was gone.
Cody shivered inside the cell, inside the manacles, inside the torn and tattered blacks hanging off his body, and breathed out.
He hadn’t talked. He’d fulfilled the mission.
Finally, he let darkness pull him under.
Obi-Wan stands in the door to the dark, damp stone cell where they found Cody and watches the medics cut his commander down from the wall.
Nothing has remained of the usually golden glow of Cody’s tan skin. It’s been replaced with a dull, dark ash grey. Cody’s cheeks look sallow, lacking the healthy fat padding that used to persevere even through the direst of campaigns, and he slumps easily into the medics’ hold when they finally crack open the manacles wrapped around his wrists.
Two small, even-sized pinpoint bruises adorn his neck, right above his left collarbone.
Behind his hand stroking his chin, Obi-Wan draws in a breath, even though he doesn’t need it. A deep, long breath.
One of the medics—Break, a relatively new arrival to replace a medic they lost a few campaigns ago—looks up, distracted by the sound of Obi-Wan’s inhale. Obi-Wan sets him back on task with a light shake of his head and what he hopes might look like a smile. He’s not so sure of it himself.
Cody doesn’t open his eyes when they transfer him to the hover stretcher they brought for the medevac. His eyelids don’t even flutter—not when Break slides a scissor along his skin to cut away the tattered remnants of the top part of his blacks, and not when Felskin, the senior medic, jabs a hypo into the side of his neck.
Obi-Wan’s eyes remain fixed on the weak sink and rise of his commander’s chest while the medics take scans, measure life signs, whisper inaudibly with each other. It all looks very serious. It is very serious.
The Force murmurs in Obi-Wan’s ear, wrong and discordant.
Felskin is first to break away from the stretcher and step up to Obi-Wan. “General,” the medic greets, which Obi-Wan acknowledges with a nod. “We’ve got a diagnosis. The commander is severely anemic, probably from a sudden blood loss. Life signs are holding stable for the moment, and we’re going to hook him up to a few bags once we’re on the shuttle back to the Negotiator, but…”
Felskin pauses to glance over a shoulder, back at where Break appears to be taking more readings of Cody’s health status. Obi-Wan says nothing behind his right hand—the uneasy set of Felskin’s jaw already does enough talking.
“There’s something else,” Felskin finally reports in a murmur, turning back to face Obi-Wan. “Something we haven’t been able to pin down just yet. It’s in his system, a sort of substance…a drug, a toxin, we don’t know. All we know is it’s acting fast, faster than we can anticipate.”
Obi-Wan nods again and strokes his beard. There’s not much else he can do—at least not with witnesses around. “I feared as much.”
Felskin squints at him in a way that tells Obi-Wan he’s succeeded in saying something without saying anything. Good.
“Well, yeah,” the medic ventures on, tentatively, “so, we need your final say in this, but I suggest that we move the commander to the shuttle, and we move him fast. There are no signs suggesting that he might carry an infectious pathogen, and if we can—”
A muffled curse makes them both pause and look at where Break is crouched low at Cody’s side.
“Blood pressure dropping rapidly,” the young medic reports, his voice a monotone rapid-fire murmur in the gloom as his eyes flick to take in the information running down the screen of the medical scanner. “Pulse deteriorating. Brain scan still percolating…sir, request to commence immediate resuscitation procedures.”
“Request denied.”
Felskin whips around to Obi-Wan, mouth already opening—most likely to tear him a new one for jumping the chain of command, especially in medical matters.
Now at last, Obi-Wan lowers his right hand and rests it on the medic’s lower arm. “Believe me, I know what I’m doing—no matter what my past decisions might tell you about me. Right now, I need you to leave me and the commander alone and withdraw all personnel from the base immediately.”
Felskin doesn’t budge. Of course not. Cody enjoys a high standing among his troops, courtesy of his competence, his tenacity, his warmth despite his bite—everything that makes Cody himself.
Break, too, remains hunkering down right by Cody’s side, one arm braced over the commander’s middle as if to shield him.
Shield him from what?
Obi-Wan allows himself one faltering smile before he squeezes Felskin’s arm and puts the Force of suggestion behind his next words towards the two medics. “Leave. Now.”
Felskin glares at him on the way out. Break, close on the senior medic’s heels, white-knuckles the portable medical scanner as he pushes his way past Obi-Wan and jostles him with an armoured shoulder in the process.
Then, they are gone, and Obi-Wan is left alone with Cody in the cell.
He wastes no more time. The distance between him and his commander is easily closed, and his armoured knees ring out on the stone floor as he drops down to crouch at Cody’s side, unhooks his lightsaber from his belt and sets the emitter against Cody’s chest, over his still beating heart.
It would be so very easy and so quick. A flick of Obi-Wan’s thumb on the activator, a brief beam of concentrated light to burn Ventress’ venom out of Cody, stop it from eating through him and turning him into something Obi-Wan knows his dear commander wouldn’t approve of.
Swift and painless. That’s how it could be.
Obi-Wan pauses then to look at Cody’s still face. The smooth, waxen skin, not a wrinkle in sight. Always the untouchable, brilliant commander.
Untouchable, brilliant, and oh-so young.
Under the tip of Obi-Wan’s lightsaber, Cody’s chest deflates one last time and is still.
The lightsaber weighs heavily in Obi-Wan’s hand as he withdraws it and clips it back onto his belt. Only the hand he reaches up to cup Cody’s cheek is heavier.
Touching Cody’s skin is akin to touching the cool, smooth marble of a stone column, with exception of the soft give of his freezing skin—skin which the rigidity of death will never touch, now that Obi-Wan has made his decision.
He rises up onto his knees to bend more easily over his commander. He frames Cody’s face with his pale hands, cradling the still eyelashes fanning out over Cody’s gently curving cheekbones, the moist, slightly open lips. He leans down, down, ever down, and lets his own mouth fall open, exposing the two long, sharp fangs safely nestled within his upper jaw.
He feels the sting in his gums as he draws his lips too tight so they scrape along the tips of his teeth, and he doesn’t wait for the first drop of dark, viscous blood to fall before he closes the distance between himself and Cody entirely.
Cody’s mouth is soft and pliant and willing under his. It falls open easily when Obi-Wan nudges with the tip of his tongue, and no flinch follows as Obi-Wan nicks Cody’s lower lip with his teeth and lets their blood mingle.
Cody’s hair, soft and thick, whispers in the grasp of Obi-Wan’s fingers. The ugly hunger inside Obi-Wan’s chest rears its head, and he pushes it down in well practiced motions.
Soon, Cody won’t be prey to Obi-Wan’s instincts anymore, but a peer.
The kiss grows long and cold despite the heat churning in Obi-Wan’s guts, one-sided out of necessity. Cody’s head weighs heavily in Obi-Wan’s cupped hands, limp when Obi-Wan tilts it back for the blood to slide down Cody’s throat. Muscles bob weakly under his touch, scrambling to escape death without knowing that the effort is useless. But at least, Obi-Wan muses as he swipes his tongue along the inside of Cody’s mouth to coat it with his blood and inject it into any micro-abrasions, it will be enough for the next best thing.
He worries Cody’s lower lip between his teeth one last time before he draws back, leaving Cody’s mouth hanging open and his gums exposed. They’re bloodless, pale, like rubber.
Obi-Wan looks away as he pushes Cody’s jaws closed and pointedly doesn’t flinch at the clack of Cody’s teeth upon another. His hand comes away wet with cold blood. He wipes it on the tatters of Cody’s upper blacks. They’re ruined anyway.
Then, he settles in for the wait.
His blood starts showing visible effects against Ventress’ venom after maybe a quarter hour of sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the stretcher. At first, it’s a blink-and-you-miss-it jump of a muscle in Cody’s cheek.
After that, it quickly grows much worse.
Obi-Wan gives up on using the Force to hold Cody down when the convulsions make the back of Cody’s head connect with the stretcher with a sickening crunch. He switches to a good old-fashioned headlock to protect at least part of Cody’s upper body while the rest twitches and twists, the very fabric of life rearranging itself beneath the thin veil of Cody’s skin.
There are tears leaking from Cody’s open eyes. They soak into the fabric of Obi-Wan’s sleeves, frigid like the touch of space’s vacuum.
When it’s over, Cody lies in Obi-Wan’s arms and trembles and gasps for shallow, useless breath. His nails have broken through Obi-Wan’s skin where he’s spent the past few minutes clinging to Obi-Wan’s hands.
Obi-Wan shushes his commander’s panicked breathing with a palm over his mouth and his thumb and forefinger squeezing his nose shut. “Gently now. You don’t need to do that anymore.”
Maybe four or five minutes pass before Cody stops struggling against Obi-Wan’s hold, exhaustion written on every line of his body. His eyes are wide and baleful behind Obi-Wan’s hand.
When Obi-Wan removes his palm, he reveals bloodless lips, tinged dark purple with the lack of oxygen. He uses a corner of his wide, loose sleeve to wipe away the tears and snot and drool so Cody will look at least a little human again.
Cody just keeps clinging to his hand like it’s a tether keeping him from being sucked out into the vacuum of space. His grip, shaking, isn’t any weaker for it.
Obi-Wan folds his hand over Cody’s still chest—no pulse, no respiration—and looks at him and waits.
When Cody finally speaks, it’s with a voice that sounds hoarse from screaming. “Is this…life?”
Obi-Wan can’t contain it—he gives a mirthless smile and shakes his head. “Only something that pretends to be life, I’m afraid. But it’s the next best thing, wouldn’t you say?”
“It’s…dark.” Cody blinks owlishly into nothing, like the light filtering in through the open cell door can’t reach him.
“It always is, at first.” Obi-Wan catches Cody’s hand when it slackens and falls from his arm. He gives it a squeeze that makes Cody’s gaze flicker back to him. “The important thing is to not let it consume you, and to look for the light instead. Come now—your troopers are waiting. They probably think I’ve killed you by now.”
Cody accepts Obi-Wan’s help to make him sit up—barely. Stiff-limbed like a new-born eopie, he just sits on the edge of the stretcher for a while. Obi-Wan stands and lets his commander rest his head against his hip and cards his fingers through Cody’s soft, horribly tangled curls.
His hand is dislodged when Cody straightens out his back and looks up at him. “You’re the light.”
“If you think so.” Obi-Wan lets his fingers trail along Cody’s cheek one last time—ignoring the responding pang of something sweet and aching in his chest—before he steps away, towards the door. “Follow me, then.”
Cody follows. He gets up, sending the hover stretcher swaying, and starts shuffling after Obi-Wan, slow on his feet at first, but his gait growing firmer with every step.
In the doorway, Obi-Wan waits, holding out a hand for Cody to take, and thinks of the light.